Frozen Dessert Success - Blog by Sentry Equipment

How to Make a Batch of Pumpkin Ice Cream to Lift Your Fall Sales

Written by Antonio Basile | Oct 29, 2014 6:12:00 PM

With the fall season upon us, it can be hard to keep the momentum of summer going strong. What can help is introducing flavors of the season. Pumpkin flavored ice cream can boost sales with a proven winner. Watch how easy it is to create a delicious batch of pumpkin ice cream in the Electro Freeze Batch Machine.


below is a transcript of the video:


Hello my name is Bob Romarino, I'm from Sentry Equipment.

We're the Electro Freeze distributor for the greater Philadelphia area.

Today we're going to make pumpkin ice cream.

I'm going to pour my pumpkin puree into my machine

Hi Rob Romarino from Sentry Equipment. As you can see Bob is pouring in the pumpkin puree and we want to make sure that we spatula out every bit of that puree that we can as that is what really gives the ice cream it's flavor and appearance and the taste that we want. So we don't want to waste any of that puree on the side of our container.

Before we did this what we did is we sanitized the machine with a food grade sanitizer.

Drained the machine so that everything is clean and ready for operation, ready to put our ice cream in.

This is a 3 gallon machine, so we're going to put in a gallon and a half of hard ice cream mix into the machine.

We like to do a little at a time, so it has the opportunity to pull that pumpkin puree, that is stuck in our chamber into the freezing cylindar.

Nice part about our machine is our wide fill mouth. When we designed this machine, we did that so we can have a nice clean opperation.

Be able to add particulates, add purees, and other things to the unit without having a small confined space to do that.

I'm also going to add some vanilla extract. It's always a good idea. Most flavors you are going to make

your going to add vanilla extract to. It will enhance the flavor of the product.

Once you have all your ingredients in the machine, it's as simple as turning the machine on.

set your timer and wait for your ice cream to pop out. So I'm going to go ahead and turn my machine on

Hit start. This particular machine is 3 gallons and it's a 5 speed machine. and the reason we have different speeds is for different products

The lower the overrun the slower the speed we would use.

This is regular ice cream so I usually use number 3 speed for that. It's pretty standard for making ice cream.

As you can see our light is on which means our compressor is running, we're refrigerating our barrel to freeze down our product.

Once my product gets to the tempurature which I can add air to, then I will turn it on dasher and I will run the dasher only to whip some air into the product.

You need air in ice cream. It's an ingredient of the product. It helps dry and firm the product.

So right now we have all the ingredients in the machine and our machine is freezing the product.

When your making ice cream there are a couple of key components to consider. First is overrun.

You'll hear that term a lot in our videos where we're producing ice cream.

Overrun is the amount of air thats in your finished product. If you go to your super market

and you see ice cream that's a half gallon for $1.99 The reason it is so inexpensive, is because it is loaded with air.

and air is free. So the wholesalers use a lower quality product and blow it up with air and it allows them to sell it for that price.

That's why when you come home and scoop your ice cream out into your bowl and put it back in the freezer


when you come back a day or so later, you see the volume has diminished, because that air has dissipated and has lost it's volume

In addition you will notice when you buy that supermarket product it's freezer burned after a day or so.

What happens is it's so much air, as that air escapes out of the product, it has moisture in it.


The moisture resettles on the ice cream and freezes giving you the appearance of freezer burn.


Conversely you'll see products in your supermarket that are only sold in pints and are very expensive

They are 7.99 There is very little air in those products

So they have a very low overrun becuase there is a higher quality premium product

and the other aspect in your ice cream is the butter fat content. so we talked about the overrun or amount of air

The second aspect is the butter fat content or milk fat. How much milk fat are we using in our mix?12 %, 14%, 16 % pretty standard

in the production of ice cream. Today we are using a 14 % mix. The supermarket ice cream is most likely a 12% mix,

Your premium stuff you're getting in the convenience stores that sold at a high price is upwards of 16%. 16% very little overrun $7.99.

12%, extremely high overrun $1.99 a half a gallon. So when we teach people how to make ice cream and we've taught hundreds of people

over the years. What overrun do they use? What butter fat content do they use in their mix? That is what differentiates one customer from another

and when we teach you the recipe we want to give you the basics, but we also want to teach you the differences between this butter fat content

and that overrun and what it is going to do to your finished product

Make no mistake, the most important thing is what your customers are putting in their mouth. While cost plays a role or has an effect on it in the end, if the customers don't like it

they wont be back. So we have to use a high quality mix at the overrun that is right for you.

I've seen customers do anywhere from 65% overrun all the way to 100% overrun. So it's up to you what you want to do. .

But just understand that the customers is going to recognize that the more air you put into it and the customer is going to recognize

unfortunately that the more fat the better in this world. The customer is going to recognize if your go to a point that is too low.

The other aspect is what ingredients you use. We're using a high quality pumpkin puree in this. There is less, there is more, it's up to you.

So when you're developing a recipe. When we teach our customers how to do it, we run the gamut of your ingredients, your butter fat., your overrun

so in the end they have the foundation of knowledge and they understand how the recipe is going to affect the finished product.

As you can see now , we're extracting the product. It came through with the pumpkin ice cream.

We have a nice orange tint to our product which is the pumpkin. As Bob is extruding it into the tub, we want to make sure that we don't smash the ice cream down. Because what is happening is the air caught and being released. So we want to fold it in and out to keep the consistency. We want to avoid any air pockets until we have a full bucket of ice cream. What I like to do too is I pre-chill the buckets in a freezer.

So then my cold ice cream is hitting a cold bucket adn it helps keep that temperature that we've established in the machine level.


There will be nothing better than the ice cream that comes out of a batch machine before it freezes.


We've all bought a soft serve ice cream and that is typically anywhere between 6 to 10% butterfat


and 50-60% overrun in the right machine. Well this is 14% butterfat and probably around 80% overrun.


We'll put more fat, just a little more air. It's going to be rich, creamy. It's going to be so delicious.

When we've gotten the product out, we want to fold it in and level it off and get ready.

Remember that this product has to go into a hardening cabinet -40 to -20 degrees for a minimum of 6 to 8 hours and then we need to bring it to a zero degree freezer. Now it can stay in the zero degree for as long as you need it to.


You don't want to leave it in the hardening cabinet too long, because what will happen is that it will crack
and it will affect the ice cream. Then from our tempering freezer, once we have our dipping cabinet we can move it into our dipping cabinet to serve to our customers.


One of the great features and benefits of our equipment is our dasher design. it is designed to discharge all the product into your tub so you can increase yield, increase consistency, so you don't have to go in afterward and scoop product out and put it into your bucket


This is a very very very clean barrel. It also helps reduce the clean time between batches.

so we don't have to clean as long, we don't waste time and maximize our production.

This was our pumpkin ice cream. As you can see we're just getting ready to put it in our hardening cabinet to freeze down

The nice part about this is what we can do is get crumbled graham crackers and get some cinnamon and dress it up

so many things we can do with our product to make it more visually appealing in our dipping cabinet


You can add those things into the batch machine if youd like. This is pretty much a basic pumpkin recipe.


Pumpkin puree with vanilla ice cream mix frozen into the tub. But there is a lot more you can do to differentiate.
You can make more of a pumpkin pie rather than a pumpkin ice cream. The taste of it is just amazing. It tastes like you are eating pumpkin pie and we're making this in October right now. The fall season, if you have an ice cream store, your pumpkin ice cream will be your #1 seller during the fall season.